Business Cards Now Featuring Quick Response Codes

Soon, a business card with just your name and phone number on it might just be a dinosaur.

For one Virginia firm, it has taken its business card digital.

Beginning this month, the 50-plus attorneys at Odin Feldman Pittleman have the option of adding a Quick Response barcode that can transmit information via bar code scanners and camera phones.

You've probably started to see these barcode "QR codes" in magazines, ready to be scanned and used. Now attorneys are starting to use them while networking.

Technology and e-commerce attorney Jonathan D. Frieden got the idea from a friend who works in the real estate development business, the Washington Post reports. Frieden recognized the QR Code as the same thing he'd seen at the end of printed magazine articles, where it allows a reader to quickly pull up the same story on a mobile device.

Frieden realized how useful -- and easy -- it would be to use the codes in his practice after adding a sticker to the back of his business card. Now the option will be offered firm-wide.

"The only additional cost is now there will be the cost of printing both sides," Frieden told the Post.

QR codes (you are going to keep hearing about these code) provide a pain-free route to move names, addresses and other printed information onto smartphones. Though commonplace in Europe and Asia, the practice is only recently making waves in the United States, the Post says.

It's quite likely that a business card without a QR code will soon be as out of date as one without an email address.